Ellinas puts Strakka Racing on top at home

Tio Ellinas put Strakka Racing on top of the timing screens in the second collective test session of the Formula Renault 3.5 Series weekend at Silverstone for the teams’ home event.

Ellinas set a best time of 1m41.494s towards the end of the session to hit the front, with his lap ending up being 0.158s quicker than Dean Stoneman in his Red Bull-backed DAMS machine.

Matthieu Vaxiviere was third quickest for Lotus ahead of his championship rival Oliver Rowland of Fortec Motorsports, while McLaren junior driver Nyck de Vries ended fifth in the second DAMS.

Gustav Malja ended sixth, making it a good session all round for the Strakka Racing team, with morning pace setter Pietro Fantin seventh for International Draco Racing.

Tom Dillmann and Sean Gelael were eighth and ninth respectively for the Jagonya Ayam with Carlin team, while Egor Orudzhev completed the top ten for Arden Motorsport.

Nicholas Latifi caused a brief red flag period early in the session when he spun his Arden machine at turn seventeen, while Alfonso Celis Jr stopped on track late in the session in his AVF machine, although this did not require the session to be halted.